Windows Server 2012 R2 – Hyper-V Virtual Memory Error

After upgrading my physical host to Windows Server 2012 R2, I noticed something different with Hyper-V.

When you create a Virtual Machine (VM), you can choose to specify the Startup RAM, and also to enable Dynamic Memory. This is not something new. However, I have noticed that if you use 512 MB for the Startup RAM (which I usually do), you encounter an issue.

NOTE: The lowest amount of RAM that you can specify for ‘Minimum RAM’ is 32 MB, and the highest amount of RAM (at least in my case, as I am not sure if it is based on the physical RAM available) is 1048576 MB (or 1024 GB, aka. 1 TB).

When you use less than 1024 MB (aka 1 GB) of RAM for the Startup RAM, you encounter this: Error 0xc0000017 “There isn’t enough memory available to create a ramdisk device.”

Based on my testing, this is NOT related to using Windows Server 2012 R2 as my Hyper-V host Operating System, but rather has to do with trying to create a Virtual Machine (VM) with Windows Server 2012 R2 as its Operating System. I mounted my Windows Server 2012 ISO with 512 MB of RAM for Startup RAM, and didn’t have any issues.

So, this is a new development/thing to take note of when you are trying to create VM’s that will run Windows Server 2012 R2 as their Operating System.